Abstract
This work presents a piecewise linear approximation to non-linear Point Distribution Models for modelling the human hand. The work utilises the natural segmentation of shape space, inherent to the technique, to apply temporal constraints which can be used with CONDENSATION to support multiple hypotheses and quantum leaps through shape space. This paper presents a novel method by which the one-state transitions of the English Language are projected into shape space for tracking and model prediction using a HMM like approach.